We are the digital agency
crafting brand experiences
for the modern audience.
We are Fame Foundry.

See our work. Read the Fame Foundry magazine.

We love our clients.

Fame Foundry seeks out bold brands that wish to engage their public in sincere, evocative ways.


WorkWeb DesignSportsEvents

Platforms for racing in the 21st century.

Fame Foundry puts the racing experience in front of millions of fans, steering motorsports to the modern age.

“Fame Foundry created something never seen before, allowing members to interact in new ways and providing them a central location to call their own. It also provides more value to our sponsors than we have ever had before.”

—Ryan Newman

Technology on the track.

Providing more than just web software, our management systems enhance and reinforce a variety of services by different racing organizations which work to evolve the speed, efficiency, and safety measures, aiding their process from lab to checkered flag.

WorkWeb DesignRetail

Setting the pace across 44 states.

With over 1100 locations, thousands of products, and millions of transactions, Shoe Show creates a substantial retail footprint in shoe sales.

The sole of superior choice.

With over 1100 locations, thousands of products, and millions of transactions, Shoe Show creates a substantial retail footprint in shoe sales.

WorkWeb DesignRetail

The contemporary online pharmacy.

Medichest sets a new standard, bringing the boutique experience to the drug store.

Integrated & Automated Marketing System

All the extensive opportunities for public engagement are made easily definable and effortlessly automated.

Scheduled promotions, sales, and campaigns, all precisely targeted for specific demographics within the whole of the Medichest audience.

WorkWeb DesignSocial

Home Design & Decor Magazine offers readers superior content on designer home trends on any device.


  • By selectively curating the very best from their individual markets, each localized catalog comes to exhibit the trending, pertinent visual flavors specific to each region.


  • Beside the swaths of inspirational home photography spreads, Home Design & Decor provides exhaustive articles and advice by proven professionals in home design.


  • The art of home ingenuity always dances between the timeless and the experimental. The very best in these intersecting principles offer consistent sources of modern innovation.

WorkWeb DesignSocial

  • Post a need on behalf of yourself, a family member or your community group, whether you need volunteers or funds to support your cause.


  • Search by location, expertise and date, and connect with people in your very own community who need your time and talents.


  • Start your own Neighborhood or Group Page and create a virtual hub where you can connect and converse about the things that matter most to you.

June 2021
Noted By Joe Bauldoff

The Making and Maintenance of our Open Source Infrastructure

In this video, Nadia Eghbal, author of “Working in Public”, discusses the potential of open source developer communities, and looks for ways to reframe the significance of software stewardship in light of how the march of time constantly and inevitably works to pull these valuable resources back into entropy and obsolescence. Presented by the Long Now Foundation.
Watch on YouTube

149 Your blogging excuses debunked: I don't have anything interesting to say

No matter your business or industry, you have something meaningful to say to the tribe of people who are passionate about what

March 2021
Noted By Joe Bauldoff

The Case for Object-Centered Sociality

In what might be the inceptive, albeit older article on the subject, Finnish entrepreneur and sociologist, Jyri Engeström, introduces the theory of object-centered sociality: how “objects of affinity” are what truly bring people to connect. What lies between the lines here, however, is a budding perspective regarding how organizations might better propagate their ideas by shaping them as or attaching them to attractive, memorable social objects.
Read the Article

February 2021
Noted By Joe Bauldoff

Has the Pandemic Transformed the Office Forever?

In what feels like the universe's own swinging the pendulum back from the trend of the open floor plan, the corporate world has been forced to use the COVID-19 pandemic as opportunity for workspace experimentation, perhaps in ways that will outlast any stay-at-home order.
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August 2009
By The Craftsman

On the Right Path

Traffic funneling does't stop once you get people to your site. Your homepage needs to continue their journey by pointing them in the right direction.
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On the Right Path

When I was in college, I had a professor who spoke a lot about the importance of wayfinding. He was especially interested in how the Department of Transportation studied design elements such as typography and contrast to discover the best font and colors to use on their signs. When you drive down the interstate, those big green signs with white lettering make navigation pretty easy. Or consider the wayfinding system of a large airport. Getting from terminal A to terminal D would be a nightmare without all the signs helping us along the way. The core function of good wayfinding is to get a person from point A to point B, quickly and efficiently. In order to do that, a person navigating the system should need only to look for signs to point them in the right direction. Just as an exit sign tells an interstate driver where to get off, the visual cues on a well designed homepage should direct a visitor onto the right path.

Why It’s Important to Funnel Visitors

It is the job of the homepage to quickly funnel users to the information they need the most.We often hear the term “funneling traffic.” It is usually used in the context of getting people to visit a site from the outside via search engines, social media or a traditional marketing campaign. But it is equally important to funnel traffic once they get to your site. Your company may have several types of audiences, and you need to speak to each one in different ways. The type of information provided and the tone in which it is presented will be different depending on the audience. A site that tailors its information to specific audiences needs a way for those audiences to quickly identify which category they fit in or which area they are most interested in. It is, therefore, the job of the homepage to do that efficiently. Success in this area means getting a visitor off the homepage and deeper into the site—where you can convert them from a visitor to a customer or fan. It also means protecting them from purposeless information that gets in the way of what they’re really looking for.

Know Your Audience

Before you start funneling visitors you need to identify your audiences. By knowing your target audience, you will be more confident in knowing how to connect with them. Again, your site may have several target audiences. A healthcare site has to accommodate both patients as well as medical professionals. A nonprofit organization has to accommodate people who want to volunteer their time, those who want to donate money, and those who need to use the service the organization provides. All of these audiences have unique needs and specific requests—but before they can become more than a visitor, your site has to give them what they're looking for. The power of your site relies on your ability to focus on your audiences.

Focus Your Funneling

We’ve all been there: stopped at an intersection, not knowing which way to go. One road with two names. Two roads with one name, but going in different directions. Sometimes you just pick a road and see what happens. And sometimes you get lost and have to turn around—something you certainly don’t want a visitor to your site doing. It's natural for a business to want to accommodate every single visitor that comes to their site. Doing this, however, can quickly lead to a cluttered homepage and information overload. Or, in our transportation analogy, an intersection just like this: signs If your homepage looked like this, most visitors would simply hit the back button and leave your site, not only confused and turned off, but more important, with a negative opinion of your company as a whole. If your site has many types of people visiting, it is important to identify the characteristics of your core audiences in order to quickly direct your most important traffic to where they need to go. This will keep your homepage clean, simplified and actually make decision making easier for the user. Visitors given 3 choices based on core audience characteristics—as opposed to 10 choices based on characteristics for every visitor—will be able to identify their needs and navigate more quickly. Your homepage does not need to encompass every detail about your company or product. Statistically, only 30% of a visitors time is spent on the homepage. The rest is spent on deeper level pages that are better equipped to handle the needs and interests of your visitors—and move them to action.

Give Them What They Like

Once core audiences have been established, you need to determine how you want to motivate them and what actions you want them to take. It is not as simple as saying, “visitor x goes here and visitor y goes here.” You need to know what those visitors are interested in—what motivates them to delve further and eventually cause them to take action or reach a conversion point. Audiences may be influenced by statistics, testimonials, free trials or product features. By knowing what motivates your audience, you will know how to quickly grab their attention and get them to want to take action. So what kind of action do you want your visitors to take? Of course the ultimate action is often financial, whether that is buying a product or service or donating money. But there are other actions that can facilitate that final goal. You may want first-time visitors to download a demo, take a tour or request more information by filling out a form or signing up for a newsletter. Or perhaps you want to drive people to a physical store using a “find the nearest location” feature.

Bringing It All Together

Now that you know the who, how and why, it’s time to bring everything together in a killer homepage design that will not only look great, but function seamlessly as a visitor’s guide to your site. Many well-designed sites begin with a large introductory headline and a brief opening paragraph that gives the visitor a snapshot of what the company is about or what it is selling. The funneling occurs with individual modules that target a specific audience. Designs should be clean and contain good contrast to quickly identify elements. Headlines should be specific, leaving little doubt who the following information is intended for. Typically, “more” or “continue” buttons are used, prompting the visitor to explore the next level of the site. Often pictures of a product or other graphical elements are used to entice the visitor into wanting more. Here are examples of sites that do this well. Good Homepage Traffic Funneling Good Homepage Traffic Funneling Good Homepage Traffic Funneling Good Homepage Traffic Funneling Good Homepage Traffic Funneling Good Homepage Traffic Funneling

Conclusion

Your homepage is not only a first impression, but the starting point to an experience. A good homepage is a spring board that motivates people to explore more important areas of your site. It clearly direct visitors to the information they need the most to get them to a final destination. And if their journey is a pleasant one, you're one step closer to a repeat visitor, fan, and even customer. Happy trails!
August 2010
By Jordan Drake

Leo Laporte: Man on a Mission

The founder of TWiT is taking on the Goliaths of mainstream media with a lean, mean cutting-edge netcasting network that is redefining the relationship between audiences and advertisers.
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Leo Laporte: Man on a Mission

leo_laporte_article In every industry, there are corporate giants waiting to be toppled. These old behemoths are bulky, slow, bloated and often disconnected from the markets they serve. But the reality of today’s world is technology-based and efficiency-driven. As a result, every industry is primed and ready for smarter, more agile competitors to challenge the staus quo with a product that is more relevant and better suited to the needs of its tribe while maximizing efficiencies to achieve better profitability. There is perhaps no better example of this than Leo Laporte, a veteran technology journalist and broadcaster who is taking on the Goliaths of mainstream media with his TWiT netcasting network. Laporte first developed a loyal following of several hundred thousand viewers during his six years as host of “Call for Help” and “The Screen Savers” on the now-defunct TechTV cable network. When TechTV couldn’t draw the advertising revenue needed to sustain its $100 million in annual operating costs, the network fell by the wayside in 2004, but Laporte was not ready to abandon his core tribe of tech enthusiasts. He reignited this relatively small but vocal fan base in 2005 when a 20-minute audio segment on Macworld posted on his blog sparked 30,000 downloads. This demand fanned the flames of his passion for reporting technology news and provided further evidence of a viable and underserved niche audience that the existing broadcast and cable networks simply weren’t equipped to satisfy. Thus the seeds were planted for what is now the TWiT netcasting network. TWiT encompasses 25 different shows covering topics such as computer hardware, home theater, apps, science, Google and even food. Broadcasting more than 40 hours of live streaming video per week, the network serves over 600,000 unique listeners and boasts 4.6 million downloads per month. With TWiT, Laporte is paving the way for the next wave of media. He has created a network, a brand and a reputation that truly meet the needs of his tribe. Moreover, he is posing a formidable challenge to the giants of mainstream media by engineering a smarter, more focused and efficient approach to broadcasting that takes advantage of the latest in technology to deliver captivating live content while maintaining operating costs that are a fraction of those of the 24-hour cable networks. Whereas traditional broadcast networks are built around their ability to deliver numbers of viewers en masse, the TWiT network thrives based on its ability to deliver an audience that is highly intelligent and engaged. This business model has been quite successful, generating $2.5 million in revenue last year alone and attracting advertising dollars from major national brands like Ford and VISA. Not only has Laporte found a way to successfully monetize netcasting, but he is doing so in a way that protects the integrity of the medium by founding everything in trust. He only advertises for products that he uses and believes in and requires advertisers to approach his audience with honesty and authenticity. Leo Laporte recently sat down with Fame Foundry’s Jordan Drake to share the story of how he built a netcasting empire from the ashes of TechTV and how he intends to continue making inroads against the mass media establishment. [powerpress]

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